1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of using photographic imaging technology to verify the arrangement of materials provided to fill orders for brachytherapy treatments.
2. Description of the Related Technology
Brachytherapy is used in the treatment of numerous types of cancers, including cervical, breast, lung, head, neck, and prostate. Brachytherapy has also been employed in treating eye maladies. Brachytherapy treatments require the usage of radioactive materials. These radioactive materials are used in various devices that are employed in the field of brachytherapy for medical procedures. An example of such a device is a needle for inserting brachytherapy seeds and biocompatible spacers into a patient. These needles require a specific arrangement of the seeds and spacers depending on the treatment profile and desired radiation dosage for a patient. A medical professional has to place an order for the desired treatment profile. Such custom orders require a variety of configurations of the brachytherapy materials. Due to the harm that an incorrect radiation treatment can cause, it is important to verify that an order has been correctly filled before using a device on a patient. Additionally, the law requires third-party verification that an order has been filled correctly by a party other than the company filling the order before using any ordered material. Current methods to ensure quality control are subject to high error rates.
The verification process can be accomplished manually. However, there are many drawbacks to verifying the orders manually. Due to the radioactive nature of the materials, extended exposure to the materials is highly undesirable. This results in personnel working at a rapid pace during such manual verification in order to diminish the potential radiation exposure. This, in turn, increases the number of errors that occur when manually verifying orders.
Radiography is the industry standard method for verifying orders. The containers containing the radioactive materials are imaged using X-rays. A copy of the X-ray image can then be attached to the packaged order and it can be used to verify the order. This method is effective for providing information regarding the location of certain materials in an order, however the quality of the image produced is not high, spacers, needles and other components typically cannot be identified in such images since they do not create a viewable X-ray image, and mistakes can occur from not interpreting the image properly. The poor quality of the image and the difficulties encountered in attempting to interpret the image, results in a relatively large number of errors during the verification process.
Another verification method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,530,875 B1 to Taylor et al. In col. 12, line 65–col. 13, line 14 and FIGS. 7A–7c, a needle loading report is disclosed that provides the spatial orientation of the seeds and spacers in each needle, as well as the number of radioactive seeds per needle. This report permits a customer to audit a shipment. In particular, a transparent wall of the tubular sleeve permits a person to compare the contents of each needle with the needle report. This allows a report to be created with a reduced amount of radiation exposure to the person creating the report. Although the report is highly detailed, it still requires a person at the loading end to fill it out correctly which can lead to human error.
Therefore, there remains a need for a method of verification that provides an easy way to verify the contents of an order, which minimizes human exposure to potentially harmfil radiation and that further reduces the chance of human error.